While it is nice to condemn the negotiations between the ANP and the various militant groups in Swat, it is curious to note that even most Pakistanis don’t view the accords with the same alarm as we do in the West. But while it is pleasing to complain of capitulation and “appeasement,” it is worth exploring whether or not a militant approach to militarism (for lack of a better term at the moment) in any way contributed to the current situation.
Hassan Abbas attempted to answer some of these issues in the January issue of CTC Sentinel (pdf), a counterterrorism journal put out by West Point.
The transition from being Taliban supporters and sympathizers to becoming a mainstream Taliban force in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) initiated when many small militant groups operating independently in the area started networking with each other. This sequence of developments started while Pakistani forces were spending the majority of their resources finding “foreigners” in their area linked to al-Qa’ida (roughly in the 2002-04 period). Soon, many other local extremist groups, which were banned in Pakistan, started joining the Taliban ranks in FATA—some as followers while others as partners.
He raises another point here I’ll address later: whether or not it is appropriate to refer to the Pakistani Taliban as such (while it should be distinguished in some way from the Mullah Mohammed Omar Taliban, treating it as a unitary force, despite recent developments, is probably a mistake). But the key point that isn’t focused on in the rest of his paper is that the Pakistani military was busy rooting out what it viewed as a grander threat to itself—al-Qaeda—rather than the fundamental forces arraying themselves into a grander threat.
This was also at the height of the U.S.’s coercive influence over Pervez Musharraf’s government, meaning they were doing this at our behest. I would be doubtful that even a cursory foray into the FATA would have happened if not for some expeditionary event from one of the tribes (as befits the history of the area). What’s more, so-called decapitation strikes either on behalf of or by the American military—such as the 2004 missile attack that killed Nek Muhammed—have not only broken tenuous cease-fires before, but have brought even worse successors like Baitullah Mehsud to the forefront.
In other words, before even thinking about dictating to Pakistan what its policies toward the FATA should be, we need to examine whether or not our own have been effective. Countering militancy with militancy has a poor record in the border areas going back throughout history, whether the Pakistani Army’s many disastrous forays into the areas post-9/11, its attempts to quell the more-easily-dealt-with Balochi insurgency in the 1970s, or the British in the 1930s and 1940s. Going back still further, the Moghul Emperor Aurenzeb learned the folly of treating the tribal areas with contempt when he insulted Khushal Khan Khattak into inciting rebellion—and that rebellion was never staunched through a campaign of violence, but a far subtler push through exploiting tribal divisions and politicking. In 1672.
This is not a new lesson, but it is one we seem intent to ignore. Rebellion in the tribal areas cannot be addressed as a purely military problem, yet that is precisely what the U.S. is attempting to impose on the region (this is part of a larger phenomenon in U.S. foreign policy, but that is a separate discussion). Which speaks poorly for lending American opinions on the emerging agreements any credence whatsoever.
This is part of a series examining the fundamentals of conflict around the Durand Line.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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